The technology of the separation and purification of specific biological components is essential in the biomedical area, because the specific biological components to be separated are existed in the mixture such as blood, bodily fluids, culture and so on. Commonly the separation and purification of biological components involve some forms of chromatography, which has become an essential tool in the laboratory. Some chromatography, which is widely used, is based on the affinity of the biological interaction such as antigen-antibody. The affinity chromatography based on the biological interaction can achieve the high selective separation and purification of biological components. However, there are still major problems, especially the stability and high cost of the biological affinity ligands. On the other hand, the chromatography, which is based on the technology of physicochemical interaction, gives lower selectivity with low cost of physicochemical ligands.
Nowadays several types of polymer membranes are used for the blood purification such as hemodialysis and plasmapheresis. The technique of polymer membrane is based on the size separation. It is hard to separate the target biomolecules, which have similar size of other molecules, by size separation.
Therefore it is desirable to develop the technology for high selective separation and purification of biological components with low cost.
In the field of blood transfusion, which includes inter alia whole blood transfusion, concentrated red cells transfusion, platelet rich plasma transfusion and platelet concentrate transfusion, it is now accepted that depletion of the leucocyte content before transfusion is desirable.
For leucocyte depletion of blood products, filtration processes which remove leucocytes by adhesion of leucocytes onto the fibers of a fibrous filter medium are now widely used. In the filtration process leucocyte removal efficiency is high, the loss of erythirocytes and plasma is low. Also the procedure is simple and can generally be performed at low cost and at the bedside when necessary.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,330,410 discloses that a filter comprising a mass of fibers having an average diameter of 3 to 10 μm can efficiently entrap leucocytes. EP 0155003 discloses that a non-woven fabric filter comprised of fibers having an average diameter of less than 3 μm not only has a high leucocyte removal efficiency but also can offer an increased rate of treating blood. U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,998 discloses that fibers having surface portions containing non-ionic hydrophilic groups and nitrogen-containing basic functional groups, and having a basic nitrogen content of from 0.2 to 4.0% by weight, have good adhesion to leucocytes while being less adhesive to platelets. Using these fibers as a filter medium, allows removal of leucocytes to be performed efficiently while keeping the loss of platelets to a minimum.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Specification No. 8-281100/1996 discloses that the filter medium consisted of cationic and anionic functional groups can achieve the high leucocyte removal efficiency. The highly hydrophilic monomer containing hydroxyl, amide, and/or polyethylene glycol groups are also necessary for the improvement of the wettability. However, the polymer with highly hydrophilic monomers has low stability in water and eluted. Therefore, for practical use, the polymer has to be grafted on the hydrophobic material by chemical bonds.